Unexpectedly, a Bitcoin wallet that had been dormant for 13 years responded to a lawsuit seeking to have it declared abandoned property—with a single transfer ⚖️
This address received Bitcoin on September 11, 2013, and hasn’t sent a single coin out since. On October 18 (Sunday), it moved for the first time: 411.45 BTC was transferred out, worth about $33.4 million at current prices. The on-chain record is in block 972,036, and the coins went to a new, unlabeled address.
The purchase price back then was about $130 per coin, so the total cost was only around $54,000.
Here’s the key background 👇
🔹 A “Noah Doe” lawsuit in New York named 39,069 long-inactive Bitcoin addresses, involving about 3.8 million BTC, and argued that they should be deemed “abandoned property”
🔹 The party that filed the lawsuit doesn’t have a single private key
🔹 The address that just transferred out 411 BTC was on the list of named addresses
Put simply: being able to transfer the coins shows that the owner still has the private key—immediately undermining the claim that “nobody wants these coins.”
What does this mean for ordinary Bitcoin holders?
“Long inactive” doesn’t mean “abandoned.” On-chain, whoever holds the private key owns the coins; but in court, that principle still has to be fought over, case by case. These past few days, the Russian central bank has also been changing the rules around self-custody wallets. Countries are continually testing the boundaries of self-custody.
Would you worry that one day someone might call the coins you’ve been holding untouched “unclaimed”?
#俄央行称2027年7月禁自托管钱包交易 #BTC #ETH
This address received Bitcoin on September 11, 2013, and hasn’t sent a single coin out since. On October 18 (Sunday), it moved for the first time: 411.45 BTC was transferred out, worth about $33.4 million at current prices. The on-chain record is in block 972,036, and the coins went to a new, unlabeled address.
The purchase price back then was about $130 per coin, so the total cost was only around $54,000.
Here’s the key background 👇
🔹 A “Noah Doe” lawsuit in New York named 39,069 long-inactive Bitcoin addresses, involving about 3.8 million BTC, and argued that they should be deemed “abandoned property”
🔹 The party that filed the lawsuit doesn’t have a single private key
🔹 The address that just transferred out 411 BTC was on the list of named addresses
Put simply: being able to transfer the coins shows that the owner still has the private key—immediately undermining the claim that “nobody wants these coins.”
What does this mean for ordinary Bitcoin holders?
“Long inactive” doesn’t mean “abandoned.” On-chain, whoever holds the private key owns the coins; but in court, that principle still has to be fought over, case by case. These past few days, the Russian central bank has also been changing the rules around self-custody wallets. Countries are continually testing the boundaries of self-custody.
Would you worry that one day someone might call the coins you’ve been holding untouched “unclaimed”?
#俄央行称2027年7月禁自托管钱包交易 #BTC #ETH